Hunter Pence ramps up rehab, Duane Kuiper recalls a 34-year-old beef with an official scorer, etc.

PITTSBURGH – Watching Hunter Pence sling a baseball 120 feet, go through agility drills and maneuver around cones at his usual frenetic pace, you wouldn’t know that he underwent surgery just 13 days earlier.

Pence’s rehab from hamstring tendon surgery is going well, but it’s not necessarily ahead of schedule. The Giants are sticking to an estimate of six to eight weeks, which would target him for a return at the end of July or beginning of August.

So the sight of a progressing Pence doesn’t necessarily mean the Giants are reducing efforts to pursue an outfielder via trade. They much prefer a right-handed bat, but would acquire a left-handed hitter if they like the player in question and there is some club control beyond this season.

For now, Pence is upbeat.

“I’m getting better every day,” he said. “I’m excited every day. I’m seeing little improvements. It’s a lot of work, and there are long and tedious days. But I’ve got a lot of help from the training staff, and I’m thankful for that.”

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Mac Williamson already has been called up four times this year. He said he’s gunning for George Kontos, who had six call-ups in one season. (He was joking, of course. He’d much prefer to stay the rest of the year.)

If there’s any misfortune in being called up to the big leagues, it’s that all four of Williamson’s promotions came when the Giants were on the road. He’s had to catch early morning flights to Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Atlanta and now Pittsburgh.

Another year of this and he’ll have George Clooney’s black card.

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Your friendly beat crew was wondering, so we asked: Did Brandon Crawford know that there was a Negro Leagues team called the Pittsburgh Crawfords?

Yes, he did. In fact, the Pirates wore Crawfords throwback uniforms in 2014 on a day when Gerrit Cole took the mound. Cole is engaged to Crawford’s sister, Amy.

“Oh, we have pictures,” Brandon Crawford said.

And now, so do you.
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The Giants’ 15-run victory Tuesday was their highest scoring game in Pittsburgh since Aug. 18, 1982, at Three Rivers Stadium. And Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper remembers it well.

“I had a beef with the official scorer,” he said.

Kuiper started the fifth inning with a pinch hit off Don Robinson. The Giants batted around, and Kuiper singled again. The Giants went from trailing 6-4 to leading 13-6.

After the game, Kuiper wondered why he only got credit for one pinch hit. The scorer told him that because he was already in the game, he couldn’t pinch hit a second time.

“So,” Kuiper asked the scorer, “what was I in the game as?”

“It was the pitcher’s spot, so you were the pitcher,” he was told.

“Well,” said Kuiper, “then I should get the win.”

It’s true, the Giants took the lead in an inning when Kuiper was “in the game” as the pitcher, in a sense. Alan Fowlkes got the win, instead, when he threw the final five innings.

“See why I had a beef?” Kuiper said.

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Bumgarner BP counter: four home runs, including a second-deck shot on the last pitch.

Bumgarner’s reaction: “Miserable.”

Andrew Baggarly

Andrew Baggarly has documented the most eventful era in San Francisco Giants baseball history, having covered the team since 2004 for th​ree major media outlets including the San Jose Mercury News and the Oakland Tribune​. This is his 20th season as a baseball writer.
​Baggarly is the author of the bestselling book, A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants, and the newly published Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades and Other Thrilling Moments By the Bay. Baggarly’s other notable life accomplishments include running as the Bratwurst in the Milwaukee Sausage Race and becoming a three-time Jeopardy! champion.

Can you please make up a list of things you need to know and would therefore be ok to comment about? It would really be helpful. Not everyone is capable of the never ending, completely on point and incredibly insightful comments that you throw out night after night.

No, he just throws out a never ending amount of sabermetric type info that drives me crazy. So how about you give me a list of people I can get annoyed with, hopefully matching in number the posters that I see you get agitated with.

Even worse. I’m at work not watching this game but the other bad starts usually involve him leaving pitches up. Not sure if he’s doing that here but the ChiSox side of him comes out when he’s leaving pitches up.

Philip, I appreciate your committment to it. And know you’re a fan. And I apologize for being snippy with you. It’s this recent movement to these type of “numbers” that drive me crazy, starting with the glorification of Moneyball and taken up by the Dodgers collective front office. It irks me. Once again, I’ll try and be a better person. It’s a neverending battle.

I could possibly forgive the slow walk outta the box since it was borderline fair/foul but the dramatic dropping of the head and coming to a halt on his way to second base would’ve snapped me. Probably would’ve addressed it right there.

I feel like his arm is slightly falling behind his stride, causing him to sort of sail his pitches a bit (especially to LH Batters). Wonder if he’s got any sort of soreness/ailment that’s causing him to slightly alter his delivery.

one of those games that makes you think the Giants have to kick the tires with a starter as well as an OF and pen guy.

A lot of folks like to say the Giants have a “big 3” but there is a big fall off from Bum/Cueto to Shark. As I’ve said before what you see is what you get (unlike some tha think Shark is a few adjustments from being dominant). He is a guy that will go the distance one game and basically serve up dingers on a platter the next game.

With an iffy Cain the rest of the season, have to think the FO will not feel too confident going into September with what they currently have.

The Pirates pitching has been pretty bad this season. They lost their organizational pitching guru to the Marlins before the season — Jim Benedict.

Then again, the Marlins’ big offseason pitching acquisition, Wei Yen Chen, has pitched poorly so far. He’s ironically given up a high number of home runs, even though he’s now pitching in a home run suppressing park and in the NL.

Actually Doughty deserved it (even if he is an LA King). Without Paul Martin, Burns would have unraveled, but Martin has allowed Burns to be Burns. Doughty had no supporting cast and still put up big numbers.

Did you watch Doughty? All reputation…dude gets burned regularly…. Yup, numbers. And terrible horrible defense. I get its a “scoring” type award, but it’s supposed to be for two way players. Doughty and Quick are tremendously overrated in my book

I have seen Doughty and he is better than Burns when it comes to better defense. Again, he’s paired with another blue liner who isn’t as strong as Martin is for Burns. His +/- is much better than Burnzie’s.

I can remember a lot of games where I’ve seen Doughty play one on one against a winger from a breakaway, and denied them from scoring in front of the net. I see Burns do the same and there are times he does some stupid thing (like being duked by the winger) that raises the blood pressure.

When I was driving home, Kuiper was doing radio. I guess nature called during the pitching change from Strick to Osich, and I take it the restroom is quite a hike from the broadcast booth…that’s how Kuiper explained some radio silence (“When you’re doing radio solo and you have to relieve yourself…”). I was dying. It was hilarious.

I’m thinking Liriano could make sense as a deadline target. His command has been poor, but his stuff is still the same. He’s shown he can be streaky in the recent past. I could see him turning a corner later this season.

He’s under contract for 2017 at $13.6 million. He’d add another lefty to the rotation.